I have never felt so lonely in my solo travel career. But, this time, it feels like a nightmare that I didn’t want to talk about and avoid talking about it as much as I can. By not talking about it, it means it didn’t happen right?

Being of Chinese ethnicities, I should be enthralled to be reunited with my chinese sides but it didn’t connect for me. I feel misplaced. I feel so lost. I can’t understand the language and I can’t read Chinese to save my life.

I didn’t connect with the food and the culture of this place.

This is by far the hardest post I had to write. There are so much emotions in it that I couldn’t help but confront. I didn’t want to come across as obnoxious or imbecile. But, I can’t find other ways to put this down.

I checked my passport many times and the stamps are the testaments that I indeed visited this country.

When I floating solo through the different Asian countries many of which I don’t speak the language except maybe Korea and HK, I don’t feel like I am different, there was never an expectation on me to understand their language. The locals, they embraced me as I am – a curious bystander here to embrace and be embraced. Whereas in Taiwan, amongst my own people, but I feel like I am being judged. Countless times when I asked for direction in my smattering Chinese, I was directed the questions, “ain’t you chinese, why can’t you speak Chinese properly?”. It hurt! So much and so bad.

It feels like my childhood trauma revisited me there and then, standing in the middle of nowhere, feeling the dissonance.

So much for trying to trace and find my roots, guess, it’s not meant to be.